By Natasha Rombough, Senior Director, Operations & Communications, CHBA
Meredith Yuen and Steve Marino didn’t plan on running a home building and renovation company, let alone assuming responsibility for one in their early twenties. But in the nearly 10 years since they suddenly took over the family business, Marino General Contracting Ltd. (Marino GC) is thriving.
Based in Vancouver, Marino GC delivers around 30 or more projects per year, from custom new homes to unique, high end renovations. Yuen – who co-runs the business with Marino, her partner in work and in life – says it’s the systems that have been the game changer. But getting to this point wasn’t easy.
The first generation
Marino General Contracting began in 1989 in Toronto, founded by Steve Marino’s father, Joe. In 1994, the Marinos moved west to Vancouver, and Joe continued to build the business the way many small contractors once did: With a strong instinct for estimating, a mental record of past and ongoing jobs, and a solid reputation.
It was a true “mom-and-pop shop,” with old school ways of doing business, but it worked for Joe. “He had a great team and a really good reputation,” Yuen says, crediting that strong team as a key element of the company’s transition.
Yuen, who was born in Hawaii and raised in San Diego, and Marino, met at university in California through their shared interest in rowing. Neither were tracking into entrepreneurship, though Yuen knew by the end of her degree she wanted to go into business – she just hadn’t planned on it being in residential construction.
That changed abruptly in 2017. Shortly after they graduated from university, Marino’s dad asked him to come home to Vancouver to help with the company. Steve began working for his dad as a carpenter. Soon after, Joe was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and without warning, had limited to no capacity to work. Overnight, the family’s reality changed. In the midst of dealing with the terrible news, Yuen and Steve Marino found themselves taking over the company, with minimal access to Joe and the critical information he’d been storing in his head.
“What Steve and I realized almost immediately was we can’t run things the way that Joe did. We were too young, we did not have enough experience, and we were coming into a lot of these projects right in the middle. So, we didn’t have any choice but to put formal systems in place so the company could still run if something happened to one of us. And we’ve been quite militant about that because of how we had to take over,” Yuen explains.
A new way of doing business
Yuen and Marino began documenting workflows, formalizing budgeting and estimating processes, and breaking projects into trackable phases – from planning and demolition through finishing.
“I recognized early on that it is hard to successfully run a construction company if you don’t have experience running projects,” Yuen says. “I learned the administrative side of running a business, but I didn’t know how to frame a wall or fix issues that came up on site. And while it is not always a requirement for project managers, I wanted to know.”
Yuen leaned heavily on the existing team, many of whom had worked under Joe Marino for years, to learn the ins and outs of home construction. The crew, who were quite a bit older, took her under their wing, taking time to walk her through jobsites and show her the ropes. She took it seriously and made sure not to waste their time: “I made sure that I only asked a question once. I would write down every single thing someone would say to me so that I could go home at night and study.” Yuen still works with most of those same subcontractors and employees today.
In learning the business, Yuen and Marino also reviewed the experience of their crews. They realized that when crew members bounced between sites, they rarely got to see a project through, which wasn’t ideal for project continuity and took away from the sense of ownership and pride of building something through to completion.
They addressed this by forming consistent project teams. Each project manager is paired with a dedicated group that works together across projects, making it easier to share updates and maintain clear visibility into project status.
Marino and Yuen created a repeatable project framework with tracking onto each stage of construction so that costs, hours, materials and subcontractors could be monitored in real time. The team was supportive, and the outcome surprised all of them: Marino GC scaled fast, essentially doubling its revenue year over year in the early period after the transition.
A client-first approach
Today, Marino GC specializes in high-end renovations and custom new homes, with occasional commercial work where clients want residential-level detail. But within that range, Yuen says the clients are the most important element – if it’s the right fit, no project is too small.
Much of their work comes through repeat clients and referrals. Joe Marino built a solid reputation that Steve and Yuen work hard to continue. They also embraced the opportunity to cultivate relationships with local designers and architects to broaden their referral network in a way that Joe never had. Because having the right fit for projects is a priority, Yuen says they focus on authentic relationship-building rather than big marketing campaigns to attract clients.
Within Marino GC, the leadership duo have clearly defined roles, while still sharing certain responsibilities. Marino is the relationship engine – sales, estimating and client-facing momentum, while still running projects. Yuen says he’s “the heart of the company,” someone clients and staff naturally gravitate toward. Steve describes Meredith as the “Captain” – the one that wears many hats, and keeps the machine running smoothly. She leads projects, oversees project managers, manages accounting and financials, drives operations and strategy, and is always looking to refine processes to optimize the team’s efforts and positively impact the client experience.
Process-driven results
If Marino GC’s first phase of operational transition was about creating systems under pressure, the second phase is about integration and optimization. Recently, they overhauled their operational backbone once again.
What Yuen evaluates now is not just whether their project management software is being used, but how much it’s truly improving day-to-day processes and the client journey. She notes an example of a project manager reporting an unexpectedly productive budget meeting, where homeowners arrived already informed because they’d been following the same data the team sees. For a company that prioritizes client experience, that transparency is not only efficient, it also garners trust, strengthening their reputation and client experience.
Finding a creative niche
Marino GC has a fascinating portfolio of projects, from detailed heritage renovations to unique custom homes. Meredith lights up describing the projects that combine both. One recent standout: A whole home renovation with a large landscape component. The landscape renovation has a massive 50-ft. cantilevered deck that gives the illusion of floating into the tree canopy and out over a ravine. Blackened steel, diamond cutouts and lighting below create a starry sky effect when walking on the boardwalk and night. It’s a feat of engineering made possible by heavy coordination, shoring, helical piles and driven professionals collaborating on creative problem-solving.
For that same client, they sourced a massive 15-ft. yellow cedar log and transformed it through repeated CNC iterations into a custom-fit bench. The piece was craned over the 5,000-sq.-ft. home to its final location. Leftover cedar became a second bench, and the remaining material was donated with help from Marino GC’s longtime lumber supplier to a local Indigenous artist who carved it into a totem pole.
Yuen embraces projects that combine technical creativity with the unique vision of homeowners. “We do a lot of heritage renovations, which are both rewarding and challenging because they involve uncovering layers of history. You are looking at the good and the bad, and the goal is either to restore a home to its original grandeur or elevate the construction and finishes to a higher standard.”
Future plans
The future does come with its concerns: Recruiting new talent is difficult and Yuen worries about a looming knowledge vacuum as their veteran tradespeople retire over the next decade. Affordability is another pressure point, with construction costs continuing to rise, including materials, labour and the increasing impacts of added regulation and red tape. That is one reason she values builder associations: they advocate at a scale individual companies can’t, and they can have the tough conversations with governments.
There’s also plenty of hope for the future, and Yuen is doing what she can to broaden the residential construction workforce. Marino GC joined the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association (now HAVAN) in 2016, and she became deeply involved in shaping early Women’s Council programming, later serving as Chair. Ironically, her end goal is similar to other women working towards the same outcome: to make these councils unnecessary by normalizing women’s presence in the industry. Her advice to builders who want to support more women in the industry is to build a company culture grounded in respect, making sure you have an environment where new hires succeed because the team is aligned, welcoming and focused on doing excellent work.
Long-term, Yuen envisions Marino GC continuing to evolve and grow while raising the standard for the industry as a whole. She has faith that finely-honed processes and a committed team that shares their vision will get them there.
“Working in construction is really about how you build and grow your community,” she says. “A good team will pour everything into you if you do the same back to them. And I don’t think I would be where I am today if I didn’t have those relationships early on.”
